My column, this week, such a pleasure: Margaret Cho’s New Role, snip:
Margaret Cho is not a big woman. But when I walk into the Rincon Center room where she’s being attended to by nearly a dozen Good Vibrations (goodvibes.com) staff, it’s clear that she’s the girl in the room with a huge set of super powers. While on camera, I watch the San Francisco native turned Hollywood comedian (and blogger) calmly and thoughtfully answer every question about sex and gender posed by her interviewers, as well as record PSAs for Good Vibrations. During her breaks, she is low-key and sweet, posing and smiling for every fan photo requested of her. I keep expecting her to bust out a utility belt. Or stand up and spin around for a costume change.
This is light years from the Margaret Cho who brassily proclaimed in her “Assassin” tour, “Republicans sure hate the idea of gays getting married. But they sure lo-o-o-ve those gay prostitutes.” But, really, the Cho I spent a few hours with on Saturday is not so different from the one who gets up on stage and makes a bull’s-eye out of LGBT issues and cultural hypocrisy. She was in San Francisco last weekend to make her points not onstage but from an office chair — a Good Vibrations office chair, to be exact (not made of silicone). Cho is now a member of the Good Vibrations board of directors and a participant in decisions that steer company direction and policy. I was deeply curious how and why this all came about, so a couple of Good Vibes pals invited me to come ask her my questions.
I was quickly introduced to Cho before she went back in front of the camera. At the next break, I was sending out a text message when startled by a hand gently touching my sleeve; Cho peeked around my shoulder and warmly said, “I love your jacket.” Next, she was complimenting me on my tattoos and began giving me a skin-tastic tour of hers, comparing inked body parts until she had to return to GV’s on-camera gender politics Q&A.
Link.
* Haha — I linked to Good Vibes in my column when I turned it in, but it looks like SFGate won’t even directly link to our local, 25+-year-old-local-institution from their website — I see now that they spelled the link out instead of a URL. Which, by the way, is my request when they won’t link to a NSFW site — I ask that they spell it out when they won’t link. It’s just hilarious that our local *pride* — which is like embarrassingly safe — is too scary for a link. Hah.
